Installation Impressions

This is where everything started to go a piddling pear-shaped for the Raven RV05, and much the same for the FT05. Having been permit down by the RV05 previously, I had a pretty adept thought what to look from the FT05. Every bit the design inside is largely unchanged we still ran into the same issues found when building with the Raven.

Yet, it wasn't all bad. I started by squeezing the motherboard in and while I would commonly install the memory and CPU heatsink prior to inserting the motherboard, I don't recommend doing this with the FT05. There simply isn't enough room to work with a large air-cooler already installed. With the Thermalright SilverArrow SB-Eastward Extreme in identify, we couldn't access the CPU 8-pin power connector from any angle and information technology even made getting to the 24-pin ATX ability connector difficult.

This meant we had to remove the slim optical drive cage first and install the CPU cooler once everything had been continued upward to the motherboard.

Adjacent we decided to install the power supply in anticipation of the hard drives, graphics cards and then on. Nonetheless, our first selection (the OCZ ZX Series 850w modular power supply) didn't even come close to fitting. This PSU measures 175mm long and with all its cables removed it still couldn't fit with the 3.5" drive muzzle in place. Unfortunately, all the power supplies nosotros had on hand were betwixt 165mm and 175mm.

For our photos we decided to remove the 3.5" drive cage and stick with the OCZ ZX Series 850w. Those wanting to keep the difficult bulldoze cage and however run a respectable GPU setup will need to look at one of Silverstone'southward compact power supplies. The $155 Strider Gold South 850w seems to be a must for this case simply gamers opting for high-stop SLI or Crossfire setups are going to need more power than this 850w unit of measurement can deliver.

Sadly, loftier-cease ability supplies that oftentimes achieve 190mm or more in length will mean using the Fortress v without 3.5" drives and that doesn't seem like information technology's a viable option for most gamers.

The limited PSU headroom is our biggest gripe with the FT05 and so far and we are having trouble coming to terms with Silverstone's reasoning here.

With the motherboard, memory, CPU libation and ability supply all fitted we threw in a pair of 2.v" SSDs. Moving effectually to the back side of the instance, connecting the SATA information and power cables wasn't that easy as the drives are recessed a few inches into the muzzle, making information technology very hard to plug cables in.

Next I slotted the two 2.v" drives into identify once all the power cables were cleared out. The drive mounts are slightly raised so information technology would be possible to route thin cables backside the two.5" drives. The only real problem nosotros had with this blueprint was inserting the ii screws to secure the drives. One side features minor tabs that lock into the drives so only one side needs to be screwed into place.

The only trouble is, screwing them in requires a highly magnetic screwdriver, a very steady hand and a lot of patience. Sadly, I only had one of those three requirements on the day of testing.

With the drives in place, getting all the cables fitted neatly was considerably harder than we have become accustomed to with modern cases. There is just far as well much going on behind the motherboard tray to make the installation process quick and easy.

Installing the graphics cards was reasonably simple, though you do first have to remove the expansion slot cover on the superlative side of the case. Again, routing the PCIe vi-pin/8-pin power cables to the graphics cards is a real challenge.

Silverstone claims the FT05 will handle graphics cards as long as 312mm and with ii Gigabyte Gaming G1 GTX 980s installed we used every last available millimeter.

Overall the Silverstone Fortress FT05 is a slick looking instance that seems to lack refinement on the inside equally it is permit down by a few pattern quirks. Nosotros really wish Silverstone had done more to change the pattern from the original used by the RV05, even so the reduction in wasted space is nice.